


The Burning Spaces Between

by SwiftSnowmane



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Companion Piece, F/M, Fire & Sky-verse, Introspection, POV Daryl, Slow Burn, UST, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Work In Progress, between Still and Alone, companion to Between the Fire and the Sky
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2015-01-05
Packaged: 2018-03-04 23:22:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3096383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SwiftSnowmane/pseuds/SwiftSnowmane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He would not see her gone. He would burn the world to ashes, first.</p><p>Companion to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1591847/chapters/3384230">BtFatS</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. No Longer Empty

**Author's Note:**

> Companion piece to [Between the Fire and the Sky.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1591847/chapters/3384230) Not intended to retell the story as a whole, but simply to give brief glimpses into Daryl's thoughts during his time with Beth. 
> 
> Please note this is NOT a stand-alone fic. For best results, please read *after* the main story. :)
> 
>  
> 
> **IMPORTANT REMINDER: please respect my wishes NOT to discuss the show beyond the s5 msf. Thank you!**

Carry on,  
You will always remember  
Carry on,  
Nothing equals the splendor  
Now your life's no longer empty  
Surely heaven waits for you

\- Kansas, 'Carry On Wayward Son'

~

The night was warm, almost oppressively so, and Daryl Dixon was running like hell from a raging fire.

With each step his lungs filled painfully with woodsmoke and ash from the burning shack. His head swam, and every so often he shook beads of perspiration from his brow. It had been a long time since he'd let himself have a drink. _A damn drink_ , as she'd called it.

Daryl could still hardly believe it. Any of it. It all seemed too surreal to be real. Hazily, he supposed to himself that's what 'surreal' meant.

He'd heard tell by folk who still cared about such things before the turn, that lightning never struck the same spot twice. Well, Daryl Dixon had been struck more times than he could count today alone, and by a lightning-storm in the shape of a girl.

Not for the first time in that long, strange day, they were running for their lives. Only, now it felt like they were actually running _toward_ something, not just....away.

He had now slung his bow over his shoulder along with the pack, and as he ran it clanked heavily against his back. A literal cross he had born for years in the protection of others weaker than himself, and one that he now bore for her and her alone.

As Daryl shifted the odd vine or branch out of his path, as the twigs of the forest floor crunched beneath his heavy hoots, he wanted to laugh with the feeling of leaving that place behind, of destroying the ugliness and the want and the hurt and the pain and the grief.

Of forgetting, of letting go.

He wanted to reach out for the slip of a girl who now shadowed his steps. He wanted to take her in his arms, sweep her up into a bear-hug, a redneck thank you for a gift beyond repaying.

But instead, yellow-bellied, lily-liver'd coward that he was, he just stopped suddenly and let her run into him.

Before today, before tonight, he had tried, tried so damn hard to fight it. But now, he found he just couldn't help himself. Every so often he'd halt, and turn, and wait for her to catch up. Wait for her to be by his side once more. For the forest was dark, and the moonlight only so bright. The moon _shine_ however…that searing substance still burned hotter than any fire inside him.

Standing there, looming over her, Daryl wondered fleetingly if it was the same for her. His mind a-swirl with the import of what had just passed between them back there on the porch of that now-burning shack, he thought back to it, back to the moment when he'd realized that little Beth Greene had entered his world, and had changed it, forever.

~

Sitting there on that moonlit porch, at first he'd struggled to remember how he'd ended up there in the first place.

One moment, it had been daylight and he was outside, the next it was night and the moon was beaming down on him in that dark space. (Or was that her face he saw there, shining?) It could have been a minute, it could have been a hundred years for all he knew. He thought that maybe when they'd crawled under that clock they done gone and traveled through time itself. He thought maybe time was movin' ass-backwards, 'cause hadn't it been night already?

(Inside the trunk of the car, where heat-lightning had struck once, twice, maybe more. Inside that hell-mouth out there on the road, and later, inside the cavernous halls of that infernal place of the dead.)

He couldn't remember because he was trying not to gape at her open-mouthed like some lovestruck pup. Trying to keep his guard up long enough not to go and do something stupid. Trying to distract himself with his hands, his knife, only to find that nothing could have kept his eyes from her.

Not when she looked right back.

He'd become practiced at staring at her these past weeks on the run, though every time he caught himself he told himself he'd just been trying to frighten her, trying to scare the last shred of innocence and hope out of her.

Now it was she who scared the living daylights out of him.

Or rather, the look in her eyes, the words that spilled out of her pretty mouth.

_“I’ll be gone someday.”_

He could only gaze back at her, could only plead with her to stop.

 _“I ain’t afraid of nothin’,”_ he’d told her, out there. A lie, one of the very few he’d uttered. Now, more than ever, he feared this one, final loss that, throughout all these last weeks in the woods with her, he’d been so certain would come.

But she was not blind.

 _“You were like me.”_ She’d seen right through it, just as she’d seen right through him, to his very bones, to the marrow, to the caged, messy darkness within.

There was nothing left to hide, and no one to hide it from, once she’d seen, and so it had fled from him in great gasping sobs.

And when her arms had come circling around him, her head resting against his back, her hands around his middle, small points of fire burning him even through his vest, he could no longer pretend. He’d rested the back of his own weary head against hers, and it was just as he’d remembered from that night in the prison—a brief moment of heaven, the tickling wisps of that bright-gold hair against the base of his neck, as days, weeks, months—years, even—of soul-deep sorrow had flooded out of him. She’d held on, she’d held on and ridden its waves, and did not drown. Might be she’d kept him from drowning, kept his head above water, when the dark waves reached out to pull him under.

Even that, she seemed to understand. Like she could see right to the bottom of his now-empty glass.

 _“I wish I could feel like this all the time. And that’s bad.”_   The simplicity, the truth of her statement hit him like an all-too familiar punch to the gut. How could she know? How could she know what had haunted him his whole life, first in the shape of his father, then his brother…and, finally, himself?

 _I'm a dick when I'm drunk_ , he thought desperately. Or maybe he said it out loud.

His head had filled up with crazy thoughts, then. Maybe when she'd sipped that moonshine, she'd drunk him up right along with it. Maybe, instead of going blind, she could see through everything, right through him, to the ghosts lurking in the corners.

Maybe she could see through time.

(He thought he wasn't so lit as to believe that. Not really.)

Until she spoke again.

_“You’re gonna miss me so bad when I’m gone, Daryl Dixon.”_

In that moment, he felt those words, far sharper than the knife he held in his hands. Felt them cut deep, right through flesh, muscle, and breast-bone. If she were gone, she would take the heart right out of him, would wrench it, torn and bleeding, from his chest. Oh, he’d be the last man standing, he would. But what kind of man stands without a beating heart? _Nobody. Nothing._ Just another walker; more than dead, but less than alive.

He would not see her gone. He would rain yet more hell upon this hell-on-earth. He would burn the world to ashes, first.

So it was that when she uttered the very words, he _knew._

 _“We should burn it down,”_ she said, her smile mischievous, her face emanating such light he thought he was going blind. Bad moonshine, her father had warned her.

 _Hershel, you old sommabitch._ Daryl could have laughed out loud, he could have cried. _Might’ve warned a man about your daughter instead._

How little she'd known of the world, he’d thought. How little she’d seen before it all went to shit. Confident in his despair, he had told her there was nothing left worth seeing out there anymore anyway. But she, shining there beneath the moon, had rendered the words meaningless. She'd always been worth seeing.

He should have known; he'd always seen her.

Or had he? Daryl Dixon considered himself to be an observant man (and that was putting it modestly), but today he sensed that he'd nearly missed something mighty important. Something right in front of his eyes. He thought of how he'd tried to ignore her, tried to ignore how she made him feel all these weeks—all jumbled and aching and protective inside—and how he failed, utterly.

He recalled the defiant, challenging look she tossed back at him, like the small, piercing darts he'd thrown with a vengeance, when he'd shouted at her and handled her so roughly. Handled her like she was nothing but a bottle of Peach Schnapps, fit only to be smashed upon the ground. Anyone else might've turned tail and run. Anyone else, except Beth Greene.

There was a time that a glass in his hand was for shattering.

But she was not.

(Not just another dead girl.)

No, sitting there in that bright-yellow shirt (stained now, he remembered, his fault, his fault), she was the ray that shines through and starts the fire. Light can be refracted, absorbed, it can travel through eternity, and still it remains light. _"You gotta stay who you are,"_ her words echoed, through time.

Oh, she scared him alright.

He thought how, after his shuddering sobs had finally ceased, after the tidal wave of sorrow had finally ebbed, she had still not let go, but had calmly, kindly—and yet, without any judgment or pity—led him back to the cabin, her fingers clasped upon his arm. He had not shied from that continuation of her touch, but had let her guide him, meek as a child, and she, deceptively strong even as her small hand prodded up onto the porch.

He remembered now. How he got there in the first place.

He glanced at the young woman before him, living, breathing, smiling. Smiling at him. As though he was not, after all, nobody. As though he might, just might, be somebody.

Used to be a glass in his hand was for drowning in. Daryl briefly examined the empty insides of his jar before stealing another glimpse at the girl shining across from him. In that moment, realization washed over him: she might’ve stopped him from going under earlier that day, but tonight he was close to drowning again—drowning in _her_.

And then, as though he could no longer remain there in her presence without his heart exploding, shattering into a hundred million pieces, Daryl stood up. He pried his knife out from where he’d thrust it into the wooden planks of the porch floor, and smiled back at her. (Just slightly, he was out of practice, after all.) To Beth’s upturned, expectant face, still glowing beneath the shining moon, he spoke the words to her, his agreement, his admission that he would follow her to the ends of their already-ended earth:

“We’re gonna need more booze.”

Now, glass was for starting fires. For burning down dark, ugly pasts, and all the shadowy spaces in-between.

~

Out there in the forest, they were moving together again. Shadow and flame now both behind them. Finally, they'd made it far enough away from the fire and the incoming walkers that they could safely pause, just for a moment. Take a much-needed breath.

For a heart-stopping second or two back there he'd lost sight of her again amidst the underbrush. But then…there she was, shifting a hanging vine from her beautiful face. Still bright, still shining. Still blinding to a man's eyes that had failed to see beyond ugliness, beyond pain, for so long.

And then she was standing before him, once more.

"Come on," he rasped down to her. His rough croak sounded far harsher than he'd intended.

But she was still smiling up at him, as though harsh or no, any word at all was welcome from his lips. He felt a surge of anger and guilt at himself for the weeks that had just gone by, but it was no use trying to change the past. No, she'd done gone and set the past free. Sent it up in smoke and ashes. Remade it, remade _him._

And so it was Daryl found himself smiling again. Mustering up his courage, he found his inner-iron—reforged now in her burning heat to some kind of steel. And so he let himself, just for a moment, rest a hand upon the slightness of her back, the sharp blade of her shoulder.

As they moved through the darkness of the night-forest, two shadows beneath a pale, silver moon, the re-made man remained all-too aware of the little lightning-girl striding swiftly beside him. Despite the moonshine surely going to her head, she pressed on. As though it weren't nothing at all. As though this was where she'd always been and always intended to be.

By the time the dark night had lightened into dawn, Daryl Dixon was no longer sure whether Beth Greene sprinted at his side, or if he ran at hers.

~


	2. All the World is Green(e)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Companion to [Chapter 2: 'The Old Days Again'](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1591847/chapters/3753253) of [Between the Fire and the Sky](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1591847/chapters/3384230).

He is balancing a diamond  
On a blade of grass  
The dew will settle on our graves  
When all the world is green

\- Tom Waits, 'All the World is Green'

~

In the heat of the afternoon, Daryl crouched in the undergrowth, waiting. He had long since finished setting up the snares, and yet he remained there, unmoving for a time. It was hot as hell out there, but greener than ever. After all, it was summer still. For some reason that surprised him.

Already it seemed like he’d been out there in the heart of the forest with her…forever.

In that grove of river birch, waiting for an unsuspecting cottontail to grace him with its presence, Daryl felt a sort of mist lifting. Like he was emerging, all squinty-eyed and blinking, from a weeks-long stupor. (He couldn’t have been _that_ lit last night, could he?) If he was feeling it, no wonder she was, too.

But it wasn’t just the echoing haze of a hangover, it was more than that. After last night, after yesterday…well, he’d become painfully aware that he had, in many ways, neglected certain of Beth’s…needs during these last long weeks. Sure, he made sure she had food to eat, and that she passed through the woods unharmed, in body at least. But anything more than that, and…Christ help him if he wasn’t abashed, now, in the clear light of day, to recall that she’d had to practically beg him to help her find that damn drink.

Beth Greene was no spoiled princess, neither. No matter how many times he’d called her that, by word or gesture yesterday. _Rich bitch, college bitch._ He felt bile rising, felt it burn the inside of his throat. Shit. For fuck's sake, she’d grown up on a farm, after all, and had lasted an entire winter on the run back before the prison. And even at the prison, she’d not exactly had it easy. None of them had.

She couldn’t help the skin she was born in. Couldn’t help that it was soft, fragile, perfect. Easily marred. Just as he couldn’t help his own scarred, sun-worn, weather-beaten hide. He’d been made to protect such fragility, and all he’d done was try to mar it further.

And now, out in there in the middle of nowhere, she’d made no complaints about the rough living, despite being oh-so young and all alone. Alone with _him_ , a grumpy old redneck bastard. Her entire family, gone. _Their_ entire family. He knew full well that he might be all she had left now, he’d known it from the moment they ran from the prison like bats out of hell. The thought was enough, at times, to make his heart quail within his chest.

If he’d thought any sort of god were listening, he would have asked, _Why? Why take her family? Why stick her with me? Girl’s done nothin’ to deserve this._ But no. Whatever cruel deity might now rule this infernal world would answer such a question by laughing in his face. _Life ain’t fair, Dixon. Never was. We ain’t none of us done nothin’ to deserve this._ He wasn’t thinking of the walkers, neither. Might be the world had needed a good Apocalypse. Might even have been _fun_.

Might have been, but it sure as hell wasn’t.

The prison, their family.

Gone, gone, gone.

And he, so cold, unable to grunt more than few harsh words to her, when a kind word could have been her entire world.

Oh yes, sitting there beneath the cruel, beating sun, he was mighty ashamed of himself now.

Last night, even before they’d burned it down, that place where ghosts of his own past had lurked in every corner, Daryl had decided: he would do all in his power to find another place for her, even if it took…well, however long he had left on this godforsaken earth. It would have to be a place safe not just from walkers, but from people too. Safe from men. Men like the Governor. And others, for sure as hell there would be others, even more fucked up and twisted, the _un-neighbourly_ types he’d warned Michonne about so often. Daryl knew that if the prison couldn’t keep a man like that out, they had small chance of finding anywhere else that could. And yet, as he peered through the underbrush, to where he could just make out Beth’s small form sitting propped up against the oak tree, surely uncomfortable and in need of better night’s rest than a forest floor could give, there was no question in his mind.

Even so, he’d have to be careful, very careful not to get her hopes up too high, for he could as yet promise her nothing. The thought galled him. Even though he knew damn well she didn’t expect any promises. In fact, she never seemed to expect anything from him at all. She didn’t have to. All she had to do was look. Look at him, with those enormous blue eyes.

(Blue like a summer sky he might fall into any moment, and she, the sun, scorching him.)

That’s all it took. One look. And it was the sudden knowledge that he wanted— _needed_ those eyes on him that scared him more than anything.

As he crouched there, waiting on what would surely at best be only the most meager of meals to scurry on over, Daryl allowed himself to wish. He wished more than anything he could go on a run for her, to get her things she needed from places only he would dare to go. Oh, he knew she was daring—fearless, even. But he could not help the protectiveness that surged within him. If only he had somewhere he could briefly leave her, somewhere truly _safe_ —ha!—as though he could still believe in that word, after the prison, after everything. Right now he would’ve given anything—anything—for Beth to still be safe in the prison, with Lil’ Asskicker (he could hardly bear to think of her) on her hip.

A deep blow for them both, that one, a wound that would not easily heal. (As if losing all the others weren’t fucked-up enough.)

These past weeks Daryl had often wondered if he had been right, that day the Devil had come calling, to urge her to leave with him when he did, wondered if maybe he should've stayed a bit longer, searched a little bit harder with her for those kids. But, no, second-guessing never got a man anywhere but deeper into self-doubt, and he couldn’t afford that, not now. Nothing he could have done would’ve changed the outcome. Somehow, those kids had gotten out before them, on foot.

Someone had, for a time, helped them.

Everybody makes it, until they don’t.

All the same, it didn’t stop him thinking on it, turning it over in his mind. Beth standing helpless over the broken and scattered fragments of those little bodies; Beth crumbling into her grief; Beth weeping until he thought there’d be nothing left of her, until he thought that she too might blow away into nothingness—those images would remain seared into his mind forever, deeper than any scar.

Even worse was the memory of being unable to do anything for her in that moment. It lingered within him, brewing like bad moonshine, troubling his already guilty conscience.

He’d make it up to her, somehow.

At some point Daryl realized he’d stood up and started pacing, thoughts racing like boxing hares across an open field. So lost in thought he’d hardly noticed the bow over his shoulder snagging on the vines, the thorns catching on the holes in his jeans, scratching at his legs. He looked down, and he saw small beads of red, like drops of crimson left by a lung-shot buck. Like a blood-trail.

Berries and blood…

 _Raspberries._ The word came tumbling into his mind, out of use for a long time, but still strangely familiar. With a shot to the gut he recalled that day, right after the prison. When Beth had tried hold on to her daddy’s faith, and he’d looked on sorrowfully as the inevitable had happened instead. She’d gathered grapes, then. For lost children. Like something out of some old tale.

He’d been lost in the woods, once.

Nobody had gathered berries for him.

He knew what he had to do, then. Before he’d even made the conscious decision he’d already pulled out one of his rags and was plucking each tiny, perfect, ripe form, and placing them as delicately as his man-hands could place them, into his bandanna. The thorns scratched and scraped his knuckles, tried to slice through his calluses, but he didn’t flinch, not from this task.

Once he had picked only reddest and ripest—only the best for her, from now on—he carefully wrapped them up, and, unbending himself, he stood up and adjusted his bow on his shoulder.

The snares could keep.

He strode carefully, quietly, taking each step one and a time, like he'd learned so long ago from his own daddy. _"What I tell you, boy? Ain't you been listenin'? Walk quiet, I said, like an injun."_ He could still feel the whip-crack of that voice, deep in his bones. Not like it was something he'd ever forget. No, not even a shack-burning could erase _that_.

As Daryl approached the spot where he'd left her under that big, spreading oak, he halted. For he heard it then, floating through the spaces between the trees, what could only be the music of her sweet voice. The sound of it, prettier even than a wood thrush in spring, nearly brought him to his knees. He felt like the mere mortal man that he was, approaching the sacred place of some goddess, some angel of music, come to worship, come to leave an offering.

Though he wanted to remain there, forever-unseen, though he wanted nothing more than to prostrate himself before her and then retreat quietly back to his snares, he forced himself onward.

He was greeted by Beth reaching for her little knife, the startled look across her face replaced almost immediately by her usual shining brightness. She greeted him; he breathed with relief. When he'd left her she'd looked mighty pale, and far too sickly for his liking. She was still pale, but the fierce, beating sun seemed to have brought some life back to her. Grimy and tired though she was, as always the sight of her face took his breath away.

Somehow, he managed to speak some words all the same.

Somehow, even though his hands had begun to shake like an old man's, he managed to hand her the little package he'd so meticulously wrapped.

A strange expression crossed her face at the sight of what the rag held. Was she upset? No…touched, more like. Her too-big blue eyes widened. "My favorite," she breathed. She might as well have inscribed the words upon his heart.

She uttered a heart-felt thanks then, and Daryl's breath once more caught in his throat.

He didn’t mean to turn on his heel so suddenly, to stride away from her back into the forest. But he couldn’t let her see. Couldn’t let her _look_ , in case she saw in his eyes the reflection of the unshed tears that glimmered in her own, like dewdrops beneath the morning sun.

~

Back in the grove, Daryl stayed with the snares a long time, breathing slow and deep, thinking things over in his head. He knew what he had to do, he’d known since last night, when she told him, all matter-of fact, that she’d be gone someday. The thought had sent such a shudder of fear through him that he, without even thinking, had pleaded out loud with her to stop.

He would not—could not—lose her.

 _Tomorrow_ , Daryl thought. _Come first light I’ll get us movin’ again, find her somewhere real nice, where she can rest, really rest. Somewhere I can take care of her, the way she deserves. Somewhere where we can…_ No, he couldn’t think that far ahead.

He didn't dare get his own hopes up, either.

~


	3. Couldn't Drag Me Away

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Companion to [Chapter 3: 'Wild Horses'](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1591847/chapters/3792739) of [Between the Fire and the Sky](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1591847/chapters/3384230).

Wild horses couldn't drag me away  
Wild, wild horses, we'll ride them some day

-The Rolling Stones, 'Wild Horses'

~

In the dim gloom of the darkened tack room, Daryl was wide awake and more than a little uncomfortable. Not that such a state of being was unfamiliar to him. No matter how much she insisted, he didn't dare let himself sleep more than a few winks most nights. No matter that they seemed 'safe' in here. No matter that he was bone-weary. A full night's sleep just wasn't for the likes of him, not for a long time now anyway.

No, sleep wouldn't come in anything more than snatches here and there. Tonight, especially. Damnit if Beth hadn't got him thinking. And now, he couldn't seem to stop. He was thinking about what she'd had said earlier, about the horses. How people might've loved them. Loved them enough to die for them.

Loved them like family.

He couldn't stop thinking about what she'd said, about the Charger—he _did_ miss the damn thing, no matter how much he'd insisted otherwise. (He missed the power of it between his legs, missed the freedom it afforded a man in a world with so little true freedom left). He was thinking on what she'd about Merle, about what he'd done back then, for the prison. How he'd died for family.

Daryl knew the truth. Sure, Merle had died for family. For Daryl's family. And in the end, for Daryl himself.

_Ain't that just the way of it, little brother?_

Now, all of it—all of _them_ —seemed to have been for nothing. Everything, turned to dust. (Was that all the future held? Everything and everyone gone, and him, the last man standing?) But then he remembered Beth's voice, insistent, assured, telling him that it did still matter—to _her_ , at least. Her words, full of light and hope (not false, real, real) echoed in his head and found their way into the darker spaces of his mind.

No matter that she herself was fast asleep at his side, her head resting on that poor excuse for a pillow he'd made out of an ancient, smelly horse blanket.

Daryl tried not to think of her lying there, close, so close to him.

He could do it, just.

Out in the woods, there were things he could do to…relieve himself away from her presence. He could hardly do such a thing here, her face so close to his lap. Sweet Jesus, just thinking about it was enough to make him more than a little discomfited. He willed his mind as blank as possible, willed his body to follow. He could do it, if he tried not to think on how she’d hugged him, held him, twice now; if he tried not to think of how her bare skin had glowed in the soft afternoon sunlight that day in the woods, how it had felt under his hands, when he’d come charging out of the grove, thinking only of saving her life, and finding more of an eyeful of her slender, beautiful form than he’d ever expected in his life.

He thought he should've been blinded by the sight. Too much beauty for an undeserving man in an undeserving world.

But there was no un-seeing what his eyes had seen. He ought to have known that well enough, by now.

Since the night they'd run from the burning shack, the moonshiner's place all gone up in flames, Daryl had been forced to admit it.

He'd been aware of Beth Greene for a long time.

Just how long he did not know for sure, perhaps for as long as he’d known her. Perhaps even at the farm, though he’d had other things on his mind when he’d first arrived. Perhaps that winter, when it was only just the few of them, a small, makeshift family together on the road. Or, maybe later, when she became the Lil' Asskicker's mommy in all but blood.

However long, it was long enough.

It was the painful, sharp awareness of a young boy longing for something he knew he could never have. Something that would remain, always, just out of his reach. It was a pain Daryl had known all his life. The man he was now knew how to dull the awareness down, liking blunting a knife, so that it didn’t cut so deep. So he could still move, breathe, function and sleep. Even forget about it, at times. At the prison, he’d had plenty reasons to get up in the morning, plenty of mouths to feed, plenty of folk depending on him for their every need.

Now, it was just her, as perhaps, somewhere deep down, it had always been.

He had nearly lost her, earlier that day.

(You die for your family, you don't let them die for you.)

(But they did, they did.)

That he could have been so careless with such a precious charge, so distracted as to only belatedly recognize the danger lying in wait, even though they had crossed countless fields while running for their lives, had shaken him. He was already strung up tighter even than his bow these days; the signs were everywhere, herds large and small on the move, and, he was sure, the un-neighbourly types picking over whatever might be left in their wake.

Daryl sat in the dark, the guilt and the rising fear of all-too familiar failure threatening to un-man him. He tried to concentrate instead on his pain, on the feeling of his aching back against the cool, hardwood wall of that room, that place that still smelled of creatures surely long-dead—creatures far too noble for this shit-hole of a world, creatures which he knew must still live on, galloping, inside her memory. But once more, no matter how he tried to turn his thoughts elsewhere, they inevitably returned to the girl nestled there, so close to his side.

It was then that something came to pass that, had Daryl dreamed at all in recent times, he would never even once have dreamed possible.

As Beth lay prone on the hard floor beside him, her small form began to twitch and tremble, and she cried out a few times, unintelligible sounds. He didn’t need to understand the words to recognize the pain. She was dreaming. Her father, perhaps. Or…no. He still couldn’t bear think her name. Even 'Lil Asskicker', the moniker he himself had given the child when she was born, seemed too much now. But there it was. And Beth dreamed on, and on, and cried out beside him in her sleep, and still, he could do nothing.

Until she reached out, still gripped by shadows of their shared past, her arms encircling, her hands clutching, her head resting, close, so close to his rapidly-beating heart.

There was nothing else to do with his arm, he told himself. Just like the night he’d come, all honor and gravity, and noble intentions, to her prison cell to tell her that her young man had died on what should have been a simple supply run. The night he’d come to her for absolution, and instead received something far greater than heavenly comfort from her embrace, and had felt his fingers coming up of their own accord, finding her elbow, and drawing her, silently, closer to him.

There was nothing else to do with his arm now, then to let it come to rest across her shivering form, to take her by the slightness of her shoulder, as lightly as possible, and, single-handed, press her gently against his chest. As the wisps of her white-gold hair tangled once more beneath the stubble on his chin, making his breath hitch and his stomach flutter, there was nothing else to do but let his lips graze the top of her head, to inhale the scent of her hair. In the prison, it had been all shampoo and the faint, lingering baby-smell of Lil’ Asskicker. Now it was pared down to her sweat, her skin. It was the damp earth where she slept each night beneath the sky, the grassy field where she had fallen and nearly disappeared. It was the woodsmoke and ashes of their many fires.

It was girl, woman, and wild thing.

Another crack of thunder sounded above, and as the rain began—a soft pattering at first, and then louder—he heard them. They were just outside, beyond the stable wall; he knew their stumbling, their snarling, their growls that were more like hisses. Demons come here, to where there should be only the soft whickering of angelic creatures. Come to take this last remnant of her world. Come to drag them both to hell or whatever it was that was their un-life beyond death.

As Beth began to stir awake beside him, she was still clutching his shirt, her hands chill against his skin where her fingers laced between the buttons. She stirred, and yet she did not let go.

With his other hand, he moved for his weapon.

And so, there was nothing to with his arm, but reach down silently and unsheathe his knife. There was nothing to do with his hand, but hold the hilt in his grasp, firm and strong. There was nothing to do with his arm, but that for which it was made.

He would not lose her, not this night.

~

Later, much later, after the herd had passed, after he'd sheathed his weapon once more, after they'd both gotten up to relieve themselves in the shadowed corners of the tack room, Daryl somehow found himself lying upon the dust and dirt of the hard floor, resting his head upon the very pillow he'd made for her.

He hadn't lost her, not yet, not yet. But the night was far from over.

And yet, this time, when she'd insisted, he found that he could no longer resist her considerable force of will. Beth wanted him to sleep; Daryl could deny her nothing.

(Already she'd insisted on learning to track, to hunt, even to shoot his bow. And he couldn't have refused if he'd wanted to, even if he'd tried.)

The storm raged on beyond the stable walls, and he now found himself with his head resting almost upon Beth's lap (or at least, darn-near close enough that, even tired as he was, he was all-too aware of his head nearly on her thighs). The man who had thought himself made for only for strength, protection—for absorbing the violence of their world so that she would not have to—now found himself drifting into slumber under the protection of the very girl-woman he'd almost failed today. Now found himself accepting her comfort. Only comfort, he told himself. And rest, for a weary head.

(Nothing else to do, he told himself again.)

(He knew damn well he wasn't fooling a soul, least of all his own.)

Daryl would have laid down his life for this girl, his only remaining family. This girl who had somehow convinced him to lay down his tired body beside her instead. This girl who dared him to sleep.

Dared him to dream.

Once more, he tried not to think about her, even as she smoothed away a lock of his lank, unwashed hair from his head. Even when she began to softly hum a tune he recognized as a 'Stones song. He tried, but the fight was short-lived. Half-hearted at best. He was tired, so tired. Soon, he surrendered completely. Maybe this was another form of laying down one's life. Putting it into her small hands.

(Trusting, trusting her.)

As his eyes closed and opened and shut again, as he drifted away on the waves of melody wash over him, Daryl mused that only Beth Greene could transform something as grating as Mick Jagger's voice into music approaching ethereal.

The pounding of the rain upon the metal roofing and the softer tones of her voice all blended strangely into one sound, and Daryl could no longer keep his eyes open. He felt his breathing slow and deepen, and knew he was on the brink of a deep, deep slumber. He felt Beth rest her hand gently, so gently, on his shoulder. The touch of her slender fingers upon his bare skin made him once more almost painfully aware of her closeness, and yet at the same time he remained grateful for her soothing presence. He wondered vaguely if he were already asleep, already dreaming.

 _Wild horses,_ she sang. _We'll ride them someday._

As the song weaved itself way into his fading thoughts, Daryl realized that he'd like go for a ride with her. He'd like that more than anything.

~

That night, for the first time in weeks, Daryl Dixon dreamed.

He dreamed of a vast, open sky, glittering with a hundred thousand stars. Of an endless road, stretching far, far into the west.

He dreamed of the Charger. He sat astride it with his crossbow affixed to the bars as it had been in days of old, and his poncho billowing like cloak behind him, as though he were a goddamned knight instead of just some redneck drifter.

And Beth, oh, Beth…she was seated at his back, her pale, slender arms wrapped tightly around his middle, as though he were her whole world. As though he'd never been _nobody, nothing_. Her hair floated out around them both like a cloud, like a halo.

He dreamed that as they rumbled down the road, an entire herd of wild horses—their coats an array of colors he had no words to describe—thundered past, and, for a time, galloped beside them.

Beth laughed at the wondrous sight of such creatures running free. She let go of him just for a moment, to raise her arms high into the air. _“I’m flying,”_ she proclaimed to the sky. Her voice carried within it such joy that his dream-heart felt fit to burst forth from his chest.

They rode thus together down that long, abandoned stretch of highway, away from the dust and the dirt and the blood, across wide-open plains, through deserts and canyons, over mountains, beyond the very horizon, until they reached the shores of an endless, surging sea.

Even in his sleep, Daryl had enough self-awareness to recognize that he dreamed impossible dreams. But lying there, amidst the dirt and the dust, his head resting in the cradle of Beth Greene’s lap, he dared himself to dream on.

~


	4. Bleeds to Red

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Companion to [Chapter 4: 'Hunt Thee Down'](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1591847/chapters/4086468) of [Between the Fire and the Sky](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1591847/chapters/3384230).

The field is cut and bleeds to red…  
The infirmary man may count me dead,  
But I've gone to find my ain true love,  
I've gone to find my ain true love.

\- 'You Will Be My Ain True Love' (from _Cold Mountain_ ) 

~

A beautiful day like this, he should've known it couldn't last.

Standing alone in the filtered sunlight of clearing, shaking his head in wry amusement, Daryl stuffed the string of cans into the backpack. He shouldered it along with his bow, and went to follow Beth’s trail. He didn't begrudge her the head-start. Not at all. Even so, after giving her a few extra moments, he moved in the direction where she’d run off. He might have scoured the immediate area for walkers before they started their crossbow lesson, but that was a while ago now; anything could be out there.

As he jogged after her, he found that he was smiling despite himself. She had some nerve, going off like that. He had to admit, she’d come a long way since she’d first started, all eagerness but no patience. He remembered the way she used to just take his big knife and stomp off into the woods. Now, she was learning to track, _really_ track, and was handling his bow with much greater ease, even shooting smaller, moving targets. The thought pleased him, not merely because he and he alone had taught her this, but because it eased his mind to know she could, in an emergency, shoot his bow, and possibly save herself.

She had learned other things, too, in the last few weeks: to fight back, when cornered or trapped, to lash out at a potential attacker. And not just the slow-moving, clumsy ambushes of the undead walkers, but the fast, strong movements of living men. Those lessons had stirred something in him that he had thought he had buried deep. Daryl was many things these days, but, perhaps with the exception of that not-so-long ago day of the moonshine, _red-blooded_ was one thing he'd not allowed himself to be for a long while now.

And yet, it was difficult not to be wholly…aware of her during those times, in which closeness was requisite for proper instruction—a sort of closeness not even the crossbow lessons had allowed. It was she who once again had wanted to learn, and he who had devised the mode of teaching. Daryl had to admit that this game of theirs was something he’d come to look forward to, and, hell, Beth’s little trick today made him think that, maybe, just maybe, she looked forward to it as well.

He tracked her as easily as he would a deer. She’d run quite a distance, past a patch of slim, young birch, through a curtain of hanging vines, and over a number of fallen logs. Glancing around, he noticed a strand of her white-blond hair caught upon a thorny branch amidst the underbrush. At one point he came upon a troubling spot where she had slipped and fallen—he saw the print of her small hand, there, just so—but soon enough he found her, hiding behind the trunk of an oak, and she was unharmed.

She put up a damn good fight this time.

After he’d caught her, pressing her slender form against the tree, his finger bleeding where she’d bitten him, he smiled again to himself. He was bitten, kicked, scratched, but he had to admit…he liked it. He liked the way she moved in emulation of the creatures she loved, and the way it stirred something deep within him. Like a hungry wolf, he could not help but be drawn to her vitals, to her warm pulse, to the flowing blood beneath the smoothness of her throat, to the bare wrist he held imprisoned beneath his own hand. And to the more vulnerable parts, further down, where, were he truly a predator in the ways that far too many men were, he would have sunk his teeth long ago.

He could not help but grin down at her in wry amusement at the irony—that it was _she_ who had bitten _him_.

Might be she was more blood-thirsty than he thought; might be she had more of the she-wolf or vixen in her than he’d known. As he slowly sucked the red droplets from his finger, he found himself watching her for a reaction. And, there, he thought he could see, fleetingly, an answering hunger in her wide-eyed gaze, and a quickening of her already gasping breath. He thought there was something in the way her chest heaved, her small breasts rising and falling, rhythmically, close to his own pounding chest. Might be such a game caused the blood to run hot. Might be such a game was dangerous.

He heard himself make a lame quip, how he never knew a whitetail fight so dirty. Beth just looked up at him, and her wide, blue eyes seemed to ask, _Well, Mr. Dixon, now that you've gone and caught yourself a deer, what’re you gonna do with her?_

Daryl Dixon was not a man to give himself over easily to any passing fancy, but in that moment, as he looked down at the girl—no, woman—below him, as he looked at her lips, flushed red and slightly parted—he thought that he could have kissed her.

He could have kissed her, long and hard.

He could have, but he didn’t.

No sooner did he think he might have seen something in her returned gaze, then the next moment he convinced himself that the desire he’d witnessed there could not possibly be for him, but rather for the moment. Beth carried a joyfulness within her heart, a love for life itself—it was that lightness that caused her to sing to herself at times, he knew. He yearned to hear another song from her, though he had yet to admit it. It was something, that unlike a kiss, he might one day muster up the courage to ask her for.

Of course, Daryl could see plainly that, as always, her too-big blue eyes held only playful laughter, not dark seduction. She was no vixen of his imaginings, just as he was no slavering wolf. Rather he thought her akin to a young filly, who only moments earlier was nearly stamping her foot at him in impatience to be finished with her lesson. And he? Well, he knew he must be nothing more than an old hound (his bark had always been worse than his bite), and follow his young mistress wherever she willed (though there would still come times when he must lead her, he knew).

No matter that he could no longer help but notice how her slight hips swayed as she walked with his bow hoisted in her arms, the way she treated it like it was something more than just a weapon. Innocent, wholly unknowing of the effect her concentration on such a task had on him. Unaware of her own beauty, a beauty at once down-to-earth and yet somehow not-of this-world.

No matter that he was painfully, acutely aware of how her pale skin even now glowed in the filtered sunlight of the afternoon forest. How her seemingly frail wrist felt in his grip where he held her pinned to the bark of that tree. How her blood pulsed there beneath his fingers, warm, fierce and defiant.

Daring, always daring him to _do somethin’_.

And so, he dared. He moved a hairsbreadth closer to the young woman in his grasp. Beth’s upturned face held a smile just for him and her eyes—those wide, all-seeing eyes—held him captive. The ache in his chest tightened, and Daryl faltered.

He knew damn well that she was not for him.

A man like Daryl Dixon existed not to lay claim, but to serve. Only to serve.

Hunting companion. Protector. Maybe even…friend. That was all he was—or ever ought to be—for one such as Beth Greene.

It was enough.

Or, at least, it had been, once.

Being that for her, well…sure as hell was better than _nobody, nothing._ And so, he told himself that if there was a fire burning here, it was his and his alone. He would continue as he had, and follow her, serve her, guard her, and, other than in this strange game they played, and the times at night when she would anchor herself to him in her sleep, other than that, he would keep his distance.

And so he let her go, let the pulse beneath her wrist slide from his grasp, let his hand fall to his side, his gaze lowering with it.

For a moment, Beth seemed about to speak, until the reality of their world came crashing down around them once more.

It was well that they had stopped their perilous game when they had. For a piercing scream echoed through forest all around them. A woman’s scream. Daryl was instantly alert, unslinging the crossbow from his back. If he’d had the hackles of a wolf, he would have raised them now. As it was, the sound was enough to make the hairs of his body stand on end.

Beth had her smaller knife at the ready, her sweet smile now gone, her playful laughter stilled. Worry darkened her features now. “It could be…” she breathed.

 _Someone we know_ , he finished in his own head. He knew that she thought—hoped—they still had a chance of finding what remained of her family. Their family. Did he dare risk discovering it was Maggie, or another of their own, only to be once again, much too late?

Only when he had seen the determination on Beth’s face, did he know what he must do, and only when she had promised to stay close by his side (he’d nearly growled the words to her, so resolute was he not to let her out of his sight), did they press onward, he leading the way toward the terrible sound.

(Daring, always daring him to do good, to _be_ good, in a world as ugly as sin.)

And so, beneath that sunny sky Daryl stilled the red-hot pulsing of his blood, and moved them both silently toward the dying screams, toward the dark hell of the undead that surely awaited them.

~

Later that evening, after the horrors of that blood-red field, after yet another too-close call (and all for nothing, for they had once again failed utterly to save a single life and had nearly lost their own), after they had finally left the death behind them for a few more blessed hours of living and breathing, Daryl once more found himself facing the exquisite torture that was a night of physical proximity to Beth Greene.

They rested now atop a tall, wooden structure they had found, high above the world and all its beauty and sorrow. It was a place that had once belonged to an old hunter, now gone from this life. For this deer stand had surely once belonged to the very man whom Daryl had put down on that gore-strewn field this afternoon, of that he had no doubt.

He sat propped up against the wall of the stand, Beth's head resting against his bare shoulder. He glanced down at her. Engulfed as she was in his leather vest, she appeared especially small and vulnerable. He'd wrapped the vest around her tonight without hesitation, for she'd been shivering uncontrollably ever since the sun had faded to palest red in the west. It was pitch-dark now, the stars glittering above their heads where part of the stand's roof had caved in. After shifting around uncomfortably for a spell, Beth had eventually grasped hold of his arm tightly, and then had finally fallen fast asleep.

It was only a matter of time before, in her slumber, she slid down to the floor of the stand. Daryl looked down at her, now lying awkwardly upon the damp, wooden floorboards. No doubt she'd be shivering again any minute. With the sigh of a man resigned to his fate, Daryl shifted himself to lie beside her. He'd keep her warm at least, with his vest around her, and with his own body heat.

Resting beside her, he remained awake for what he reckoned to be hours, his arm behind his head, gazing up through the half-sunken roof at the star-strewn sky and the pale sliver of moon that hung just above the tree-line. He tried not to think of where they'd been, what they'd seen today. He tried not to think on the old hunter, given a death-blow by the hand of a man, not a walker's bite. He tried not to think of his own hand, wielding that sharp knife, putting the man down, so he would not turn.

And he tried especially hard not to think on what the dead man had said.

_"Keep your woman close."_

Your woman.

(She no more belonged to him than he'd belonged to anyone before the turn.)

Sitting there in the dark, Daryl shook his head, as though to banish the encroaching thoughts. He tried instead to think on where they might head tomorrow. What direction they should choose that would see them as far away as possible from that troubling tower of smoke still rising just a few miles away. How far they might go and what they might track and hunt together come morning.

And, like so many nights that came before, he tried not to think of _her_ nestled there so close beside him.

He tried, and failed. For in that moment she cried out in her sleep. Another bad dream—by now, he knew the sounds she made in the midst of her nightmares all-too well.

She cried out once more and, still fast-asleep, reached out blindly into the night. Daryl propped himself up on one arm and looked down upon her shaking form, feeling strangely helpless in the face of such night-terrors. The irony that he could protect her from walkers and men, and even from the cold, while she was awake but could not step between her and whatever now pursued her as she slept was not lost on him.

Still dreaming, Beth reached out once more into the dark spaces between them. Her eyes blinked open, and for a moment she appeared to stare straight up at the night sky, but she did not wake. Suddenly, her small hand connected with his face. At the unexpected warmth of her touch, Daryl's breath caught in his throat. He held himself very still, unsure what to to do. Then, Beth's fingers slid lightly against his the ridge of his cheekbone, as if out of instinct, as if searching for something, anything.

And like an old hound returning to a beloved mistress, Daryl could not stop himself; he leaned further into her touch, and lifted his fingers to cover hers, just for a moment.

With eyes still turned, unseeing, toward the stars, Beth dreamed on. Only now she made a slight mewling noise and muttered something that might have just been nonsense, but that Daryl could have sworn sounded like, "'Mmm, there you are."

His heart constricted painfully in his chest. Before he could stop himself, he replied, "Hey…yeah, I'm here." His voice sounded odd, husky…the voice of a man still unused to whispering soothing words to a woman in the dark.

Tentatively, he lifted his other hand to her face, smoothed her wispy hair from her forehead, and moved away a strand had caught in her mouth. Her lips were parted, slightly open. His thumb lingered there for a moment against her bottom lip as he allowed himself the briefest, gentlest of caresses.

They remained thus for a time: he guarding her, tracing her smooth cheek with his large palm, she suspended in dreams, her mouth unclosed, her small fingers curling of their own accord, light and warm against his face.

There beside her, Daryl felt the knowledge of it settle within his chest and make its home there. She might not belong to him, but he was hers. Beyond any reclamation. Might've even been hers the very moment she'd held him tight, when they'd both been lit on moonshine and he'd broken down and sobbed in her arms. Or maybe even that long-ago night in her cell, when she'd comforted him at a time when he ought to have been comforting her. No matter how long it had been; he belonged to her now. Always would.

He might have been a fool for letting things go even that far on his part, but he'd be even more of a fool now to deny it any longer.

And she might not be his, not now, not ever, but he would keep her close all the same, _keep her safe goddamn it_ , for as long as he drew breath.

It was then that her lips closed around his thumb, and he nearly jerked his hand away in surprise. But he had no wish to wake her, and so he stilled himself, even though the sensation of her little mouth, warm and wet around him in that manner, was strangely, unexpectedly arousing.

In that moment, Daryl couldn't help but recall their game out there in the woods beneath the afternoon sunlight, when his blood had turned hot and he'd thought, fleetingly, ridiculously, that he could have kissed her. But that was before the bright day had had turned dark, before the screams of the living had led them to a field of the dead. Now, looking down upon those lips, he once more willed away all thoughts of covering them with his own, and focused only on keeping her safe, on keeping himself as close and still as possible, as though he could make his body into a living shield against whatever demons from earlier that day now chased her in her dreams.

Not that she couldn't take care of herself, he knew. She'd fought bravely out there today, and had even come to his aid when he'd been surrounded. Perhaps, even in her sleep Beth fought her own battles. Perhaps even in her dreams she ran like the wind through dark forests, escaped whatever hunted her.

Didn't stop him wanting to protect her though. _Needing_ to protect her.

(He didn't know how badly he needed to be needed.)

Then, just as suddenly as she'd raised it, Beth lowered her hand from where he'd held it gently against his cheek. The cool night air rushed into the spaces between them, and, in her place, kissed his face.

He could still hear her small voice in the dark, mumbling a few more unintelligible words. Then, he felt her shift again in her sleep. He took it as a sign, and heaving another sigh (whether with relief or regret, he could no longer tell), he forced himself to turn away from her to lie on his side. Almost immediately he felt her snuggle into him once more, felt her fingers clutching at the back of his sleeveless shirt, felt her soft, warm breath against his neck.

Many long and torturous moments passed for the man in her grasp, but eventually Beth's breathing steadied once more behind him. Her nightmare had gone, the demons now fled. (He amused himself for a moment that maybe, just maybe a pair of dirt-stained angel wings had something to do with it. Protecting her in her sleep, even if he could not.)

Behind him, Beth had gone quiet save for her slow, steady breathing. She muttered to herself no more, but slumbered on, peaceful and serene.

Daryl was, of course, wide awake, and would remain so for a long while yet. With the thundering in his chest fit to draw every walker for miles, and his blood once again surging red-hot and fierce through his whole body, he smiled ruefully to himself, not for the first time that day.

In this life of theirs, the beauty of each passing day might indeed be fleeting. But Daryl Dixon knew that all the true beauty that remained in this world now slept at his side, wrapped in a redneck's armor.

And though she belonged not to him nor to any man living or dead, he held her close, secret, and safe within the dark, crimson chambers of his still-beating heart.

~ 


End file.
